


if some hope remains

by Quire



Series: roll your eyes and i'll go away [2]
Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers (Comic)
Genre: Grief, Kinda, M/M, Mental Illness, Mourning, Post-Comics Fix-It, Shapeshifters - Freeform, maybe shapeshifters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 20:19:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14409831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quire/pseuds/Quire
Summary: Jensen grumbles into the pillow, but he quiets and goes back to sleep, comforted by the familiar strength and warmth.Seven dreamless hours later he crashes hard into waking, stiff and startled, eyes wide.There’s no one in his bed except the cat.





	if some hope remains

**Author's Note:**

> nod your head if your mind's been changed  
> shake it, love, if some hope remains  
> say the word and of course I'll stay  
> roll your eyes and I'll go away  
> just please don't leave me guessing  
> just please don't keep me waiting
> 
> \-- Messenger Bird's Song, Bright Eyes

The blue dream is the worst dream.  It’s the worst because it’s not a damn dream at all, it’s a memory, and it always ends with the same desperate misery of a nuclear bomb going off - blue sea, blue sky, and then the most gut-wrenching stab of loss Jake’s ever felt, can ever remember.

It’s the worst dream, and he hasn’t had it since he adopted the cat.  Little grey munchkin thing with the most judgmental stare he’s ever seen on an animal, followed him home one day and insists on sleeping curled up beside him in the hotel bed.

He gave it a bath.  The fact that it let him do that and still sticks around means, Jensen thinks, that he’s a cat person now.

It’s not usually still in bed when he wakes up, but he likes that it leaves a warm spot.  

 

* * *

 

 _“Losers, this is Alvarez.  Yes,_ that _Alvarez, so don’t piss him off.  Wheels up at 0600 tomorrow.”_

_“Huh,” Roque says, eyeing the newcomer up and down.  “Thought you’d be bigger.”_

_Alvarez glances at Roque, dark eyes amused under a definitely non-regulation hat, and shrugs in a what-can-you-do sort of way.  Jensen looks up from his laptop, interested, because most guys with a rep like Alvarez’s are the first ones to get all worked up about Roque’s posturing.  But Alvarez - deadliest-sniper-in-two-decades, scares-all-the-newbies, hardass drill sergeant Alvarez, if base rumour is right - just goes over to his assigned bunk, sets his gear down, and stretches out  on the bed with the grace of a big cat. Panther, maybe._

_He’s not a small guy, really.  Average height, just smaller than Roque.  And hell,_ everyone’s _smaller than Roque._

_Jensen gets caught staring almost straight away, but Alvarez just raises an eyebrow at him, one corner of his lips lifting in what might almost be a smile, and Jensen grins back and lifts a shoulder in a shrug.  He’s sorry about Roque, but hey, they’re not all assholes. And Alvarez’s not-quite-a-smile turns into an almost-smile before his eyes move on, assessing the building with a precision and intent that kinda makes Jake hot.  So what, he has a thing for extreme competence and apparently also for dudes in cowboy hats, who knew?_

_Roque has already gone back to polishing his knives.  Jake tried to tell him how phallic that was once, but it didn’t go down well.  For a smart dude, Roque really hates metaphor._

 

* * *

 

It’s been thirteen months, seven days and four hours since the bomb.  Just over a month since he told Stegler to get fucked. Just under a month since Pooch left Antigua, disappeared to find his family and start a new life with the new IDs Jake built them all.

And just a little less time than that since Jensen was last sober for more than half a day.

So what?  It’s not like the cat cares.

 

* * *

 

_“You got assigned Alvarez?”  Fredrickson whistles between his teeth, settling at the table in the mess hall next to Jensen._

_“Yeah, apparently we rate a full-time sniper now.  Which I think means they think we’ll get dead without him.”  Jensen tosses his hands in the air, dramatic, and grins at Fredrickson.  “So that’s real comforting. You can have my computer if I don’t come back, but you gotta promise to delete the porn.”_

_“Different mission, same old shit.”  Fredrickson always eats like it’s his last day on earth, shovelling mashed potato in with gusto.  “Better to have a sniper than not. Just your luck to get stuck with a dead-eyed silent one, though.”_

_Jensen swallows his own mouthful, blinking.  Dead-eyed? Alvarez? “He’s all right,” he objects.  “Not everyone is blessed with the gift of the Blarney Stone.”_

_“I’m not sure it’s a blessing in your case.”_

_Jensen laughs.  “I think he’ll be useful.  I heard about that shot he made last month, the countersniper.  Hoo-eee. Give us a hundred guys with aim like that and we’ll be done with this sandpit in a week.”_

_“If he saves your ass, buddy, I promise, I won’t say another word against him.”  Fredrickson smirks over his plate. “I’ll just think it. “_

_“Double plus ungood,” Jensen tells him sternly, but that was one reference too far.  Everyone thinks Big Brother’s just a television series these days. What a waste of Jensen’s childhood reading time.  Fredrickson just shrugs and goes back to eating, conversation derailed a step too far._

_If anyone’s guilty of thoughtcrime, it’s probably Jensen, anyway.  Lucky your thoughts don’t count as the Tell part of the whole Don’t Ask, Don’t thing.  Otherwise Jensen would be deeply, deeply screwed, and not even in the fun way._

 

* * *

 

You’d think it would be nice, living full-time on a tropical island.

It’s fucking _not_.  

Humidity and sweat is only fun when you’re on holidays.  The temperature here is bullshit; Jensen’s armpits are always sticky, he needs another shower ten minutes after he steps out of the first one, and even cold drinks don’t do much good.

Not that he often bothers to make them cold.  Sometimes, if he’s at a bar instead of drinking in his room, sure.  But he has even worse luck at bars than he used to have, and he’s not even trying to hide who he’s hitting on any more.  Or being particularly safe about it. What does it matter if he gets the clap, or worse? In the scheme of things?

The cat bites him when he tells it that, which is just fucking weird.  He tries to explain, but he’s had enough to drink that he can’t make the argument particularly cogent or compelling, and he’s still sober enough to realise, before too long, that he’s sitting alone in his room telling a _goddamn cat_ about herpes and HIV and like … there’s a point at which he can’t even stand himself any more.  

“Fine, I deserved that.  But you’re still an asshole.”

The cat licks a black-tipped paw, daintily, and turns around on the spot so it doesn’t have to look at him any more.

“You are,” Jake insists, but it’s a losing battle.

He tries very hard not to think about other one-sided conversations, in another life, that felt a lot like this one.

 

* * *

 

 _Jensen is_ great _at avoiding questions.  He’s great at avoiding anything he doesn’t want to talk about, honestly.  All he has to do is keep talking, talking, talking, letting his well-trained motor mouth take control and fill up all the spaces, slipping and sliding away from the point and ducking questions and dodging glares until whoever it is gives him up as a lost cause and leaves him alone.  He’s been doing it for years. Decades. He’s been doing it since high school. Never mind DADT, high school was some real bullshit for a closeted gay kid, let alone a skinny geek. Jensen is a past master at sidestepping unwanted conversations by bringing up, like, the mating habits of ducks.  Nothing derails a conversation quite like a duck penis._

 _But it won’t work with Alvarez.  Jake uses words like a wall, throwing up a barrier between himself and anyone who gets too close;  Alvarez uses silence like a jackhammer, only with precision. Like he’s skewering you to the wall. Or just poking right through it, like he’s Flash, vibrating his way through to the core of you, to exactly what you don’t want him to know.  He just_ looks _at you until you say something useful.  Jake’s walls of words don’t bother Alvarez at all._

 _And then, usually, he smirks.  Whoever said he was uncommunicative was full of fucking lies.  Alvarez says_ everything, _he just doesn’t say it with, you know, actual words.  But even Roque gets him, loud and clear. Even Clay does.  Once he’s on your team, he’s on it all the way._

_Jensen kinda wishes they’d scored someone a little less perceptive.  Okay, sure, “less perceptive” isn’t maybe a great option for a sniper, but Jensen’s made it this far without anyone spotting that “Bad With Women” is more of a narrative he’s spun around himself than a truth.  He’d like for that to continue._

_Except maybe, with Alvarez, he wouldn’t.  And that scares him more than fucking anything.  Almost enough not to push it._

_But he’s_ Jensen _.  Pushing it is what he_ does.

 

* * *

 

No more blue dreams, but it’s not as if that was the only misery balled up in the back of Jensen’s head.  Every time he falls asleep here on this bullshit island, it’s something else, like the ocean of carnage he’s waded through to get here is all still waiting peaceful and sleek behind him, like that scene from _Fellowship_ where the water looks all still and black and then the tentacle monster launches out of it like a fucking rocket.  Just when you think you’re in the clear.

Tonight it’s Honduras, the time when they all almost died, only in the dream there’s not much _almost_ about it.  He shifts in bed, tossing and turning, until finally Cougar gets sick of it and a heavy arm falls over his back to hold him still.  Jensen grumbles into the pillow, but he quiets and goes back to sleep, comforted by the familiar strength and warmth.

Seven dreamless hours later he crashes hard into waking, stiff and startled, eyes wide.

There’s no one in his bed except the cat.  It lifts its head with an inquisitive trill when he stares at it. Then it yawns, showing a pink tongue and white teeth, and goes back to ignoring him.

Jake can’t catch his breath.

 

* * *

 

_The first time he realised maybe he wasn’t alone in this, he was also pretty sure he was about to lose an arm, so it’s not like he was exactly in full and clear control of his actions._

_Which is his only excuse for getting cuddly in the first place.  Touch-starved, out of his mind with pain, being bandaged by those strong, careful hands, he’d just - he’d just stared, near as he can remember, through broken glasses, blinking up as Cougar worked on him.  Cougar’s eyes were dark and focused and his hands were soft and sure on Jensen’s arm, and when he was done, he helped Jensen sit up, gentle, and Jensen had tried to suppress a whimper and for a moment he just - he couldn’t. He couldn’t suppress shit.  Cougar’s arm around him, Cougar’s cheek right there, the rest of the world blurry with pain and fatigue and misery -_

_Jensen turned his face into Cougar’s neck and just.  Breathed. Just for a moment._

_It was too intimate, it was revealing too much, no straight man tries to nuzzle their no-homo-bro’s neck, but he just - if he was gonna die, he wasn’t gonna die without at least this._

_Cougar froze stiff against him, hands still on Jensen’s arms, unmoving._

_Jensen didn’t move either, but mostly because he couldn’t bear to.  If he kept his eyes shut, it wasn’t real, right? The salt-sweat of Cougar’s sinews beneath his lips, the body pressed against his own, radiating heat and steadiness and security, radiating_ Cougar, _that was the only real thing, the only thing that mattered.  Just. Just give him this, Great Abiding Powers of the Universe.  Just this moment. He can pass it off later as the drugs, as the pain, as - something, God, anything, just let him_ have _this moment -_

 _He felt the shaking in Cougar’s hand first, before he registered that the hand was leaving his arm, that Cougar was letting him go - and then, before he could react to that, that Cougar was_ not _letting him go.  That Cougar was touching his cheek, hand definitely shaking now.  That Cougar was bending his head over Jensen, touching his lips to Jensen’s sweaty, filthy hair._

_“Holy shit,” Jensen murmured, eyes wide, “holy shit, Cougs, you, really, you?”_

_Cougar hadn’t said anything, but he’d pulled Jensen closer, pressed his lips against Jensen’s hair, and the tension had flooded out of him all in a moment._

_“Holy shit,” was all Jensen could say to that._

 

* * *

 

Cougar is petting his hair.  Long, gentle strokes, over and over, and Jake keeps his eyes shut because reality is suddenly as fragile as a soap bubble in summer sunlight, and any movement might ruin everything.

But even then, he can keep his eyes shut but he’s never been able to keep his mouth shut, and he rolls his head into the hand and says, “You died, you _died_ , you asshole,” and he could swear he hears a laugh, and he can’t help himself, his eyes fly open.

There’s nothing but sunlight across the bed.  The cat’s curled up in it, small and round and grey.

He can still feel a hand in his hair for a moment, but he might be going crazy.

 

* * *

 

_It’s new at first, tentative, precious.  Something unspoken hanging in the air between them while Jake heals up;  an invisible thread connecting them, so that Jensen doesn’t have to look to know where Cougar is, hyperaware at every single moment of that dark-eyed presence._

_They don’t have a chance to do anything about it for what feels like years but, okay, fine, is actually more like two days.  Jensen gets released from the base medical centre and nobody’s in their quarters except Cougar when he lets himself in._

_Cougar looks up from his book, and Jensen leans on the doorframe and blinks at him, and they’re both just so unsure - this could ruin everything, this could get them both kicked out, this could --_

_Cougar closes his book without a sound, sets it aside, and gets up to cross the room swiftly and close the door behind Jensen.  Then he puts one calloused hand in Jake’s hair and one on Jake’s ass and pulls him close, and Jake gives up thinking for a little while, gives up doing anything but_ feeling.

 

* * *

 

One thing that reading a lot of sci-fi does:  it makes you open to possibilities. Like spider-people and telepathy and black-glass wastelands.  Like triffids, like yellow-eyed cuckoo humans, like shooting stars that turn you blind, like huge ovoid aliens that crawl out of the depths of the ocean.

Like shapeshifters.

Like just plain old mental instability.  Fuck, right, that’s a fucking possibility too, isn’t it?

“You’re the cat,” he says, trying out the words, contemplating the little stubby-legged mongrel cat sitting on his windowsill.

The cat blinks at him, and then returns to licking its hind leg.

“You’re the cat,” Jensen repeats, waving his bottle of Jack, “and you’re spying on me, because you’re a creepy spying … cat … fucker.  Wait, not a cat fucker. A cat space fucker. Or … Jesus, I don’t know.”

It isn’t reacting, and Jensen is tempted to throw his bottle at it, but he’s never really been the sort of guy to throw things at animals.  Even if they’re animals who are probably ghosts or some fucking thing.

“Why.  Why are you a cat?   _How_ are you a cat.”

It switches paws and starts licking the other one, unconcerned.  Which is such a fucking _Cougar_ thing to do in the first place, except not with the paw licking, and - ugh.  Jesus, he’s in a bad way, imagining a cat could actually be - it just doesn’t make sense.  He’s too drunk for this.

He gets sober.  

It doesn’t help.

 

* * *

 

_“Secret identities,” Jake insists, suppressing his laughter, curling his fingers over Carlos’s thigh, enjoying the sparse hairs and the warmth of his skin.  They don’t get time like this very often; usually it’s stolen moments in between missions, not luxurious days at a time.  But they’re both on leave, and Jensen’s sister is a good sport about covering for them. This is how it goes: Cougar books a cheap hotel to stay in, Jensen makes noise about visiting his sister, then sneaks into Cougar’s room, and neither of them leave until they’re due back at base._

_On duty, they’re just Corporal Jensen and Sergeant Alvarez, of course.  Maybe they room together sometimes and maybe they look at each other sometimes but that’s all anyone else needs to know._

_Off duty:_

_“You’re Batman.  It’s obvious.”_

_Cougar laughs into the pillow, a husky sound that makes Jake kind of want to kiss him some more, and splays his hand over Jake’s collarbones.  He doesn’t need to ask; the question is in the movement of his fingertips against Jake’s skin, the line of his shoulders, the tilt of his eyebrow._

_“I am_ clearly _…” Jake pauses.  He hadn’t actually thought this through. “Superman?”_

_Cougar laughs again and his hand slides down to cup Jake’s ass, making Jake shiver a little at the callouses against his skin.  It takes him a moment to clue in, but then he’s laughing, too._

_“Nightwing?  Nightwing. If you’re Batman and I’m Nightwing, we definitely can’t fuck any more, that’s gross, they’re father and son, not that that ever stopped the fanfiction - hey, no, no, come back, I didn’t mean it --”_

_Cougar - Carlos, his Carlos - definitely has some superpowers, anyway, so he can’t be Batman.  Not when he can turn Jake into a melted puddle of limbs without a single Kryptonite ring or … or freeze ray or … anyway, not Batman.  Maybe Catman. That dude was cool._

 

* * *

 

“I’m not naming you,” Jensen tells the cat, and the cat blinks at him slowly and then settles its little triangular head on its folded paws, preparing to snooze in the sun like a small loaf.  

“I’m _not_.  You’re not - you’re - you don’t even go here.”

He wishes he could believe it;  wishes he wasn’t already thinking of the cat, inside his head, as another name.  Wishes he wasn’t completely losing his mind. Sobriety isn’t making it any better.

 

* * *

 

_“I’m coming back for you, Cougar.  The sheik, he’s gonna have a rescue ship all standing by.  We’ll ammo up and come back team-handed. Even if they find you, ain’t nobody gonna fuck with a guy’s got a nuke in his lap --”_

_Jensen doesn’t believe it and he knows Cougar doesn’t, either, and Christ, he never thought it would end this way.  He thought he’d be the one to get killed, shot in the chest, left lying on the floor. Cougs had plans, had a better life waiting.  Only came on this goddamn mission because Jensen did, because they couldn’t figure out how not to be together any more, and now - and now -_

_“Sure, Jensen.  Whatever you say.”  And only Cougar could sound so amused, with a goddamn nuke in his lap, bleeding out.  “‘Least I’ll go out with a bang,” he says, and Jensen calls him a motherfucker because he doesn’t know what else to say, and folds himself into Cougar’s arms, and refuses to think it might be the last time.  He’s coming the fuck_ back _. He’s coming back team-handed.  It’s happening.  This isn't how it ends, Jesus fucking Christ, this can't be._

_“Anything else you need?”_

_“Just one thing.”_

_The stupid hat.  Jensen gives him the stupid hat._

_“Rock,” Cougar says quietly, and grins up at Jensen with blood on his teeth, and the sooner he leaves, the sooner he can come back, right, so he throws himself into the goddamn tube with the insides of his mask all hot and damp and awful, and then - and then - and then._

_And then he’s out in the ocean, and it’s all blue.  Nothing but blue. Blue sea, blue sky. No army. No team.  No rescue party. Cougar’s gonna die and Jensen’s gonna die and he always thought - god, he always thought at least they’d go out together, not like this, but -_

_And then Pooch turns up in the chopper and he asks, “The others on their way?” and Jensen knows then, with a horrifying cold finality, what he has to say.  He can’t take Pooch back in there. Pooch has kids._

_There’s no rescue.  No coming back team-handed.  Nothing._

_And_ then _it’s over._

_“No,” Jensen says, very quietly, and falls back under his babble of words, talking-talking-talking so that Pooch won’t ask anything, because if he’s asked one more thing he’s going to break.  Hit something. Blow something up. Pooch doesn’t deserve that, and so Jensen talks, talks all the way back to the mainland, talks and talks and talks and when the sky goes white behind them and the mushroom cloud rises, he doesn’t shut up for one second.  He’s not sure he’ll ever shut up again._

 

* * *

 

“You _died_ ,” Jake whispers, Cougar’s skin salt-sweat-perfect against his lips.  Cougar shudders, curls up towards him, _breathes_ , and Jake could cry.  

He doesn’t know what this is.  He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t understand a goddamn thing.  But Cougar is here, solid and warm and breathing in his bed, and Jensen honestly doesn’t give a single fuck about _how_ , not right now.

Life’s crazy.  God knows life’s always been crazy.  Nuclear bombs and mad twins and twenty-five kids in a chopper and swimming through a pipe into a secret base - it’s fucked, all of it, it’s the kind of shit that only happens to them, and it doesn’t make any sense, it’s never made any fucking sense.  So why should this be any different?

Jake gives up trying to understand it, curls himself around Cougar, and decides he’s never going to open his eyes again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> my fic writing process apparently is "write 90% of it, sit on it for months, look at it again, decide it's better to post it than agonise over it, put a couple extra paragraphs in, frown, shrug, give up" 
> 
> originally i meant there to be porn, but it didn't work out that way. i don't know, i mean, i think most things could use more porn, but if cougar _is_ the cat, then there's ... like, idk about you guys, that has the potential to get weird. and if he's _not_ the cat then it's just a really depressing story about a dude who's so fucked up and alone that he's slowly going mad, and that's not super sexy.
> 
>  **psandqs** made this better for me, she's a shining light in my dark life. i mean, she also asked questions like "so is he a cat or WHAT" and I DONT HAVE ANY ANSWERS, PSANDQS, I JUST DON'T KNOW
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [i have a tumblr come be my friend](https://in-quires.tumblr.com/)


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